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Heneghan has hit upon a crucial aspect of marketing to men: women. Last year more than half of men's pants were bought by women. And not only are women doing the buying, more often than not they are doing the washing and ironing as well. This helps explain the success of the latest version of the wrinkle-free shirt, which can be found everywhere from J.C. Penney (average price, $25) to Brooks Brothers ($65). Years ago, a resin coating was used on cotton-polyester blends. Then improved technology allowed the coating to be applied to heavier, all-cotton fabrics like oxford cloth; now it is being added to softer ones like broadcloth. Lou Amendola, vice president of menswear at Brooks Brothers, says sales of its wrinkle-free apparel, introduced in 1998 for dress shirts and now expanding into casual wear, have been "phenomenal." He notes, "People respond when there's a performance element."
Wrinkle-free is sort of old hat to clothing manufacturer Haggar, which introduced a wrinkle-free pant in a limited number of fabrics in 1992. (Pants are easier to treat with wrinkle-free chemicals because they are usually made from a heavier fabric than shirts are.) At that time, Haggar was still primarily focused on men's suits. But the shift to casual dress forced the company to reposition itself, according to Alan Burks, the company's marketing chief. Once it did, Haggar faced the same problem as everyone else in the industry. "We needed to give a new reason to buy pants," says Burks. "We had done wrinkle-free, so what was next? Comfort."
Haggar's internal research showed that the people working for Enron and WorldCom weren't the only ones in corporate America allegedly tinkering with numbers. It seems most men don't like to admit their true waist size and end up buying pants that are too small. The product born of this realization was Comfort Fit, a cotton khaki that expands up to three inches through hidden elastic embedded in the waistline. The pant also appeals to more economically conservative men who, even if they've gained several pounds, hate to throw out pants in good condition. The success of the Comfort Fit has not been lost on Dockers, which next year will add its own expandable version, called Individual Fit. This sort of cross-pollination is going on throughout the industry, and the time seems near when consumers will be able to purchase virtually any garment in a stain-free, wrinkle-free, expandable variant.
But are these developments enough to rescue the menswear industry? Some are skeptical. "These things are nice, but they only add a couple dollars to the cost of a garment," says Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Consulting Group, which forecasts consumer-spending patterns. "They don't accomplish the one thing men's retailers are dreaming about, and that's a switch back to formal dressing, and that ain't happening." Barnard, like many other analysts, says that in the current economic environment, most companies are not likely to force their employees to start spending the kind of money it would take to make the transition back to a stricter suit-and-tie code of dress.